Sam Fleming

Ed Miliband’s gambit of bashing the utilities, announced at Labour’s party conference this week, was in keeping with tradition. Opposition parties aren’t supposed to come up with substantive policy platforms far in advance of elections — it’s more about signals, symbolism and direction of travel.

Businesses have cut their investment to the lowest quarterly level since the beginning of 2011, dealing a blow to hopes for a durable economic recovery. The Office for National Statistics reported that companies invested £28.7 billion in Britain during the second quarter, down 2.7 per cent on the

The Bank of England pledged yesterday to be vigilant about any emerging risks in the housing market but emphasised that activity and the size of new mortgages remained below historic averages. Amid signs of a rapidly accelerating property recovery in some parts of the country, the Financial Policy

The gap between wages in emerging countries and those in the far more prosperous West is set to narrow sharply in the coming decades, according to a report being published today. That would sharply reduce some of the advantage for businesses operating in lower-cost markets. Britain’s average

One of the Bank of England’s most doveish policymakers has delivered a strikingly upbeat verdict on the economy, declaring Britain to be in a “sustainable and self-confirming” recovery. David Miles, an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee, said that he no longer considered the economy

Germany’s resilient economy helped to fuel the strongest growth in euro area business activity for two years in September, with the services sector driving the upturn. The monthly Markit purchasing managers’ index of activity across the eurozone rose to 52.1 in September from 51.5, leaving it at

When George Osborne announced a new bubble-prevention squad within the Bank of England in 2010, he can scarcely have imagined that only three years later there would be calls for it to rush into action. Yet next week the housing market’s lift-off will provide the first big test of the Financial

Mark Carney yesterday rejected suggestions from MPs that the Bank of England’s new guidance policy could foster confusion, insisting instead that its promise of low rates was reinforcing the recovery. In a two-hour grilling by the Treasury Select Committee, the Governor of the Bank of England said

The Bank of England should limit annual house-price inflation to no more than 5 per cent in order to prevent a fresh property bubble, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said. The institution argued that the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee needed to adopt an explicit policy to

Their ruthlessness and slyness, not to mention sorcerous ability to turn boxrooms into double bedrooms, has fixed society’s view of estate agents. Unfortunately, it seems, we are turning into a nation of them. Nearly one in four of the new jobs created over the past year has been in the property

Sam Fleming

Sam Fleming is the Economics Editor of The Times. He originally
qualified as a lawyer in the City of London in the late 1990s, before
joining Bloomberg News, where he covered company news, stock markets and
economics. He moved to The Daily Mail in 2006 to become Economics
Correspondent and latterly Associate City Editor. He joined The Times in
2010.